by Eden Butler
Quinn doesn’t want connections. I get it. It’s no wonder with the childhood he had, with the apparent contentious relationship between his parents, his father’s philandering, all the money given to him but no moral compass, his father’s defection, his mother’s death. It’s likely why he’s become so close to a little girl who may not have long to live. Relationships are complications he finds distasteful, still, none of us get through life without having them. No matter how hard we try to avoid them.
His voice sounds lost. “They do all that—fight and row and scream—because they are clinging to the last bit of passion left inside them, because they feel it draining away.”
“That’s life, Quinn.”
“No, love, that’s begging. That’s pleading that the end won’t come. But it always does, doesn’t it? Declan, Autumn, all your barmy mates and the blokes they try to wrangle down, it’s all fecking fiction. None if lasts. Not any of it.”
“So why bother trying? You believe it’s bullshit and you still keep at it, you still try to bed as many women as you can. It’s why Layla smacked you.”
“Who’s trying? I’m just trying to have a good time, and there’s not much trying to it, girls fall all over me. But you make it sound like I’m not fussed who I shag. That’s your hypocritical assumption. I am. When you get right to it, I’m damn well picky over who I let in my bed. You’re right on one thing, though. I don’t try, not anymore. I haven’t tried in ages and ages. I’ve seen where trying takes you and it’s not worth the bother. But I’m a bloke, aren’t I? I have needs. And I’m not particularly shameful about saying what I want. Like you.”
“Me?”
“Aye, you. I won’t lie about it. Twice now you’ve kissed me.” He pauses, daring to deny it with one glance and when I only met his stare, when I lifted my eyebrow in my own small challenge, Quinn smiles. “Twice it never went further than that.” He moves his gaze over my lips, a slow, steady glance that tells me all I need to know about where his thoughts have drifted to. “I’m saying that I’m not shameful about liking your mouth on me. You are. You’re fussed what the others will think of you should you let yourself give in to me. You needn’t be. It’s not as if there’s a soul here I’d brag to about bedding you. I only care that I do.”
“You’re a pig, O’Malley.”
“That may be true, love, but you’re the one who keeps coming back to this pig.” Quinn reaches out to grab the back of my neck to pull me close to his mouth, and dammit, I let him. “You’re the one pretending you don’t like me a’tall.” He takes a kiss then, fierce, firm, one that makes a quick moan slip from my throat.
And then he leaves me. Again. Sitting alone in that car, my lips throbbing, my mind twisted with the realization that he’d just shown me exactly who he was. And I didn’t know if I hated him for it, or wanted him more desperately than before.
THE COLD SNAP came in between the beginning of mass on Sunday and my mother’s peach cobbler that afternoon. There had been no warning. My father said it was one of those freak occurrences—the quick whip of cold, the hint of a storm that no radar predicted, like the rumble of something in the distance you aren’t certain is thunder of a canon.
The cold, the light flurries that caked on the sidewalk and wetted the ground should have been warning enough. Cavanagh has not seen snow in ages. The cold and winter weather we usually get comes and is over before anyone can bring their snow shovels from the garage. But this storm, with the slowness of the falling flurries and the ache of cold that settled into my joints wasn’t like the storms of past years.
It was harsher.
It was colder.
Much like the day itself.
It is two a.m. before Quinn shows in the waiting room. He bypasses my parents, my brother and sisters as they wait for news on the other side of the room. I have chosen the farthest corner near the bay window that looks out onto the small man-made lake in front of the hospital. The tall column of brick next to me hides me from those worried, anxious gazes my parents and siblings have sent my way in the two hours since Rhea was rushed to the ER.
It doesn’t keep Quinn away.
How he found out, I have no clue. I certainly didn’t call him. I could think of a dozen people I’d rather see, a dozen more that I’d want sitting next to me, watching the slow fall of flurries out of that cold window.
“How long?” he asks, and I realize he’s been staring at me, maybe watching for a slip in my expression, maybe wondering why I haven’t asked why he came at all. Of course, Autumn knows I’d be here, I’d texted her around midnight, just after I got here. There’s no doubt she and Declan would have told Quinn to leave us be until there was news.
I’m not surprised he ignored them.
“Too long,” I tell him closing my eyes, not wanting to see that constant frown on his face. I am some weird paradox—waiting in limbo for news that will either prolong my grief or force it forward. I want numbess. I want reality.
But as I’m sitting there with my eyes closed, he blurts out “Layla is pregnant,” and it shocks me, not just because of what it is, but at who is the one to break it to me. Really, with the way that Layla and Donovan have been carrying on, the news shouldn’t shock me. It does, but I can’t seem to react. And Quinn speaks so blatantly, like this news is nothing, like it’s at all appropriate to announce in the middle of my limbo.
He glances at me, eyebrows bunching together like he can’t make any sense of my stoic, bland reaction. “Her father found out, forced her hand,” he continues, ignoring the way my jaw finally drops, not picking up on how I really don’t want to be hearing this right now. “Only found out cuz the mad bint tried blaming it on me. Didn’t want her da knowing it was that Donovan bloke that got her up the pole.”
Autumn surely would have mentioned it when I spoke to her earlier, when I gave her the news of… but I’d been brief, anxious, refusing her comfort when she offered it. She would have thought it wasn’t the time to tell me.
“You slept with her?” I ask him, knowing his answer didn’t matter to me, at least not right now, not here. It was just something to say.
“Think so little of me?”
“You tried kissing her.”
He doesn’t react. He doesn’t bother denying his actions, but then I don’t care as Aunt Carol walks into the waiting room. Nothing matters to me then, except that devestated expression on her face. Not Quinn or Autumn or my friends being pregnant. Nothing.
We converge, all of us, and Carol leans against my mother, like a sponge absorbing strength, solidity. “The tests were… fast tracked. They’ve…” Her breath rattles, weakens as she watches each face around her, finally stopping on my mother’s. “Clay should be here,” she tells Mama, frowning as though she isn’t sure if she should mourn or rage against her husband leaving. It happened yesterday, just as Rhea stopped breathing. Quinn had been right. Clay had checked out. “They’ve given her a month at the most.”
Someone unplugs me then. It’s the only way I can explain the sensation that comes over me. Worse than having my feet kicked out from underneath me. Worse that the feel of my blood slipping right out of my veins. I am not prepared for the news, even though I knew it would come someday. Hadn’t we waited for it? Didn’t we know a timeline would be given eventually? But knowing and accepting are two very different things.
Around me, my family weakens until they fall back, separate, leaving me staring at my aunt as my mom steps forward and allows her sister to crumble against her. I can barely stand, myself, and am grateful when Booker leads me to a chair and lets me hold on to him as I slowly sit. Quinn has vanished. He was there, standing behind me. I smelled his cologne, felt the tremble of his hands and then he was missing. This is too much reality for him. Somehow I understand that.
“She stopped breathing and the doctor said it was because…”
“The experiemental treatment though…” my mother sounds hopeful, confident but one shake of Carol’s head and we all know t
he truth. There is no more time. There is no more hope.
Idly, I stare around the room, waste time watching the lights outside the window, then for no other reason than distraction, I call Layla, leaving a message that I’m at the hospital.
Then, I block out everything—the explanation of Rhea’s condition that doesn’t matter, the lost hope and defeat that colors my aunt’s tone. I’m uncertain how long we sit there with the low refrain of sorrow moving around us like a fog. It’s only until Booker nudges me, nods toward the door at the end of the corridor that I move, standing up and walking to meet Layla at the edge of the waiting room.
“Sayo. Sayo, oh God,” she says. Her emotion does something to me. It turns off my grief, the weight of agony that threatens to choke me.
My friend’s face is so pale. Layla’s flushed and looks tired. I know I should ask her how she feels. I should find out the details, how she let this thing that happened to her happen, what her plans are, but none of that matters really. All I know is that Layla is as scared as I am of the future, and we cling to each other, our tears flowing.
“I’m so sorry,” she says, sniffling when I pull her into a hug.
“Me too, sweetie.”
And we don’t say anything else. We watch, take comfort in each other. Layla holds my hand and holds me much the same way that my mother holds Aunt Carol. Mama holds her sister and takes into herself that well of grief because she loves Carol. Because that is what sisters do for each other.
“What am I going to do?” Carol whispers to my mother, but her voice is harsh and ragged. The anguish pours from her, the fear moves her limbs like an exposed wire flickering electricity. “My baby. My poor baby. Oh, God, my poor baby.” And then Carol cannot stop crying and because she can’t, no one can.
THE MURAL IS incomplete. Skies have been left blank, stars undrawn. There are no billowing clouds on the left side of the mural and only one side of Rhea’s face is finished.
It’s the completed side, that round cheek, the bright, brilliant dark iris that I watch, sitting in my car with the engine off. The cold barely registers because that mural fills me up, warms me. Yet in the next second I am cold again, colder than I was walking away from the hospital, refusing my brother’s invite for a drink, waving off my father when he suggested I stay with them tonight.
I didn’t want their comfort or company. It would keep me too warm, too alive. Now I embrace the numbness.
I only want to forget.
Someone inside can help with that.
I’d found out that Quinn had actually bought the warehouse a month before. Declan told Autumn the trustee thought it was Quinn wanting to set roots in Cavanagh so they did not reject his request to buy it. But he has done nothing to set up anything more than a place to escape from his brother and Joe. The power and water have been turned on, but the elevator doesn’t work. When I walk up the steps, the scent of vanilla candles and a musty, closed hallway greets me. I should worry about it being a fire trap, but I don’t. I just don’t care.
He has done nothing to make the building habitable. There are still tarps covering what looks to be old textiles factory equipment. The front offices are empty with only a few overturned desks and a reception area taking up much of the first floor. There is a staircase that looks equally old, its banister a dark stain of oak that swirls and curves up with a heavy coat of dust muting its color.
The vanilla I smell grows stronger as I make it to the second floor and the scent actually overwhelms me as I walk through an open door with light bending shadows from the cracks in the glass transom.
My footfalls are quieted by the ragged carpet lining the hallway and are only distruped when that hallway opens into one large room, something that must have been a design studio at one point, with it’s drafting tables and fallen sketches littering the floor. There are metal racks along the exposed brick walls, three spaced ten feet apart, each shelf full of crates of molding fabric, leather-bound record books and spools of thread in bins. On the far wall two large boards are bent backward on their sides, the wheels from their feet clogged with dirt and dust and what looks like years of knotted thread. There is a mid-century feel to the broken furniture and the large work table at the back of the room, which is made mostly of cast iron with a solid wood top and two swiveling seats that can be pushed underneath. On top of this table Quinn has stuffed a bundle of sketch pads, loose papers, paints, brushes and several cups of colored pencils.
Quinn is sitting on the floor next to that array of organized mess, a bottle of Black Bush between his feet. My gaze moves to the bottle when he lifts it, and the stretch of his neck when he swallows deep.
“Uisce Beatha” he says, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. When I don’t respond, Quinn smiles, making the expression fall from his mouth as he lifts the bottle, swishing the whiskey around. “Gaelic, love.” He lifts the bottle by the neck, offering it to me. “It means ‘water of life.’”
“I’m not thirsty.”
Quinn’s gaze is careful, scrutinizing as I walk further into the room, as I keep my distance from him. But the expression on his face is more open than I’ve ever seen from him. It burgeons on real, as though the mask is slipping and he can’t be bothered to care that it is.
“I bloody well am.”
Quinn takes another drink and I don’t stop him. Why would I? I came here to add to the numbness I already feel. He’s started without me. Behind me the whiskey sloshes against the glass as he drinks and I move to the window, looking out on old Cavanagh stretching below me. There is nothing stirring. No cars, no people. The town sleeps while I watch and I wonder if it would be different if those folk who had given so generously on Rhea’s behalf would be so still, so silent if they knew her life has a deadline now.
With nothing left to do, no way to keep myself from feeling all that threatens to weigh me down, I lean my forehead on the glass, willing away my tears, not eager to let Quinn see me break down.
“Sayo,” he says, getting up to stand behind me. The liquor sloshes again as he holds that bottle between his fingers. The scent of whiskey isn’t so strong, but I smell it on his breath as he moves to my side. “What are you doing here?”
He knows. Why does he ask? And when I look up at him, my forehead cold from the frigid glass, I’m sure my expression confirms it. But he is not easily swayed. Hadn’t he told me that he’s particular about who he lets into his bed?
“You should go to your family.” There’s a warning in his voice, one I know I should heed.
“I know why you do it.”
“Do what?”
In front of me the outline of the cityscape shines like fairy lights and I can just make out the mountains and the starless night beyond it.
“Never show anyone the real you.”
He follows when I step closer to the window ledge. Quinn puts a one hand on that ledge when I lean against the glass.
“Why do you think that is?”
“Because… reality, it’s too much.” One deep breath and I move my gaze up to Quinn’s face. “I don’t want to feel anything anymore. I… I want to forget.” Quinn lifts the bottle, offering it again but I keep my gaze on his face. “That’s not what I want to be drunk on.”
Quinn’s shown me enough over the past months for me to know when he’s weighing things in his mind, so when he hesitates, like he is now, I know it means he’s being cautious. It means he’s waiting for caveats. But I have none. What I offer now is what he wants. We both know that.
And still he wavers, his jaw working, his eyes squinting as he looks me over. “Careful now. The numbness won’t last. Sometimes, just like reality, that numbness fucks you over.”
Gazing back out the window, I slip the bottle from his fingers to drink, hurrying to coat my throat with the whiskey’s bite. “Not sometimes, Quinn,” I tell him, knowing that he is watching me, not caring that it’s careful, that it’s predatory. “Every damn time.”
Quinn moves behind me. I can feel
the bend of his legs, the thick muscle of his thighs and the sharp points of his hips. He doesn’t make a sound behind me and I don’t move, not when his hot breath falls on my scalp, not when Quinn weaves his fingers through my hair, moving my head so that my neck is exposed to him. He doesn’t kiss my skin, doesn’t do anything but wait, as though he expects me to stop him. As though he thinks I don’t really want this.
“Don’t talk unless it’s to tell me what you like, what you want me to do.”
“Aye.”
I shut my eyes when Quinn moves his free hand to my stomach, curling his fingers to move my jacket and shirt away from my skin, his breath moving down my neck. When I speak, my voice sounds breathless, winded. “Don’t read anything into this. I don’t love you. I never will.”
The press of his fingers on my stomach sharpens and Quinn pulls me even closer, so that I can feel his dick against my back. “Fine.”
“This… with Rhea… this will take all that I am. There won’t be much left afterward, but you can take the remains.”
A small grunt, and the brief hesitation where his hold on me eases and then Quinn presses his mouth to my neck, sucking on the skin before he moves his hand, snaking those long fingers down my stomach. “Let me take it, then.”
A slip of his fingers and Quinn opens the button of my jeans and those fingers shift lower, fanning over the fabric of my thong, moving down to cup me. My nipples rub against my thin shirt and I try to keep my breath even, but Quinn tightens his grip, the friction against my clit sharpens. “We’ll sort out the fecking rules later.”
“Late… later.”
It takes an effort I don’t have to keep upright and so I lean back, Quinn holding me up with one hand cupping me as I stretch my neck against him.